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The article talks about the Working Paper published by the Modern British Studies (MBS) research centre on new ways of thinking about the transformation of British society, culture, politics and economy between 19th century and 2015. It highlights the cultures of democracy and the rising political, social and cultural change. It states that the paper can be used as a study material for understanding the state of history in present times.

Ballot order positional effects, electoral advantage gained from a candidate's surname location on the ballot paper, have been extensively studied. For ‘low-information’ elections especially candidates located at or near the top of the ballot paper are advantaged relative to their competitors. This examination of alphabetic bias uses data from local council election results in Britain. The examination of election contests featuring more than half a million candidates provides evidence of an alphabetic bias which increases as the number of vacancies increases. We calibrate the effects upon votes and vote share of alphabetical ordering of candidates. Comparing votes cast for last- and first-placed candidates in the ballot order demonstrates a clear advantage to those placed first. This increases in size as both the number of seats and competing candidates increases. Those located in the top half of the ballot paper are more likely to finish in the top half of the vote order. Subsequently, the distribution of surnames among elected councillors is clustered towards the top of the alphabet. Measures could remove the effects of alphabetic bias, such as randomising name order and introducing experiments in local council electoral practice, a cost-effective means for evaluating change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper engages with the critique that mental health social work with asylum seekers requires urgent attention, as current practice is inadequate. Four key issues are discussed in the paper. First, I briefly interrogate key aspects of the UK's current asylum policy: poverty, dispersal and detention. I elaborate on the mental health implications of each of these and argue that these policies replicate known risk factors in mental ill health. Second, much of the psychiatric literature relating to asylum seekers and refugees draws on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as the key diagnostic category. The paper argues that PTSD has to be problematised and highlights the importance of maintaining a social model of understanding mental distress and developing it further to include insecure immigration status in our models of understanding mental distress. Third, I consider the specific issues facing women asylum seekers and illustrate how an analysis at the intersection of gender, mental distress and asylum is essential. Lastly, I argue that, to respond more effectively in this complex area of work, interventions at a practitioner, organisational and societal level are required if the espoused values of social work are to be more than mere rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reasserts the‘revisionist’ view of responses to fascist violence at Olympia in 1934. It suggests that, as more collections of private papers become available, the close relations between Conservative politicians and fascist organizations have become increasingly clear. It argues that the relaxed attitude towards fascist methods is understandable in the context of long-term reliance on fascist stewarding by Tory politicians, and that there was as much continuity as change in British views on violence in politics after 1918. The article further suggests that any claim that Mosley changed his methods at indoor meetings after Olympia flies in the face of the evidence. Finally, it refers to the home office papers to show why the politicians failed to intervene against the fascists for a long period after Olympia, and underlines the electoral dangers for the National Government posed by any precipitate intervention after Olympia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK ‘New’ Labour Government has introduced a number of regional, local and neighbourhood initiatives. These claim to share similar characteristics based upon the concepts of ‘partnership’ and ‘multi-agency’ cooperation. New structures to ensure the accountability and the delivery of these new forms of governance and service delivery have been established. Local Strategic Partnerships, with an emphasis on community ‘capacity’ building are the latest policy response. This paper, drawing upon research in Manchester and Glasgow, suggests that whilst these initiatives use a new language, they are steeped in old practices. Changing structures does not, of itself, alter the power differences inherent in local neighbourhoods where community groups are cast as ‘dependent’ by regeneration managers seeking to meet performance targets. The paper seeks to identify ways in which this relationship can be altered to enable local groups to negotiate a new agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In public debates support for migrants' rights has generally taken two approaches: the migrant as "Good Worker" or the migrant as "Poor Slave". This paper will constructively critique these approaches by considering the case of a U.K. campaign demanding a specific visa for migrant domestic workers and how they drew on the Good Worker/Poor Slave. It describes the campaign's initial focus on domestic workers as workers and how this required demanding special rights as migrant workers on the basis of the specific conditions in the private household, at the same time as calling for paid domestic work to be recognised as a job like any other. The campaign was initially successful, but the right to change employer was withdrawn in 2012. The revived campaign was this time situated within the debates about "modern slavery" and the paper will consider some of the ways in which the U.K. government has responded to this. It will argue for the importance of not reifying the difference between "migrant" and "citizen", thereby recognising connections between national and non-national workers, and also between commodified and non-commodified reproductive labour. Given the low level of public debate at the moment this may not be possible for campaigners but academics must continue in attempts to raise the level of public debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Scottish government's white paper on independence, Scotland's future, sets out its defence blueprint following a 'yes' vote. It makes clear that its defence plans would be subject to a Strategic Defence and Security Review in 2016, as well as negotiation on the division of assets with London. However, it also provides a strong indication of how it envisages its defence posture as an independent state-a major pillar of which is founded upon strong and continued defence cooperation with the rest of the United Kingdom. Is this a realistic assumption? And, if so, how would it work in practice? Contextualized by the increased emphasis on defence cooperation which sits at the heart of NATO's Smart Defence initiative, as well as the European Defence Agency's 'pooling and sharing' programme, the article assesses the benefits and challenges that might be encountered in a defence cooperation agreement between an independent Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom in the event of a 'yes' vote in September's referendum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines debates about the design and provision of post-war housing within the papers and report of the Parker Morris committee. It does so to show how the models of citizens' rights and expectations which underpinned post-war welfare provision were transformed by mass affluence and the dynamic sphere of commercial consumption. Parker Morris's deliberations demonstrate that, as early as the 1950s, the citizen-subject was reimagined as a consuming individual, with requirements based on their expressive needs and consuming desires, and that this had far-reaching consequences for social democratic systems of universal welfare provision. The introduction of consumerist imperatives into publicly defined models of citizens' needs enhanced the political and cultural authority of the commercial domain, prompted a heightened role for commercial experts and market logics within public governance, and served to devalue socialized forms of provision in favour of consumer choice in the private market. The article thus engages with the growing scholarship on the politics of mass consumerism by showing how the material and emotional comforts of post-war affluence came to be constructed as critical to social democratic citizenship and selfhood. Situating this uneasy entanglement of social democratic rights with consumer satisfaction as part of a wider trajectory of political change, the piece suggests that Parker Morris marks an early but significant moment in the transition from post-war welfarism and social democracy to the consumer- and market-oriented forms of governance which came to dominate British politics and society in the latter part of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first attempt, in the nineteen-thirties, to organize and produce a collaborative, multi-volume History of Parliament, researched and written from public funds, was the brainchild of the maverick Labour backbencher Josiah Wedgwood, who invested his scheme with an ideological as well as a scholarly purpose. Described from Wedgwood's viewpoint, the history of his History appears as a crusade in defence of democracy in the age of the dictators, and his bitter disagreements with the 'trades union' of academic historians a conflict between breadth and narrowness of vision. However, the records of the project, and the correspondence of the leading figures, demonstrate the role played by historians like A. F. Pollard, J. E. Neale and L. B. Namier in the framing of the scope and method of the History, and the vital importance of personality in determining the course of its development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Charter 88 was fundamentally both the product and catalyser of an ‘aversive’ constitutionalist reaction on the Left and Centre of British politics to the perceived excesses of Thatcherite Conservative rule. Alongside this, other longer term, secular trends were also important including the growth of a postmaterialist politics and the intellectual collapse of Marxism. However, although a number of Charter 88's domestic reforms were implemented by New Labour post-1997, the complete closing of this ‘aversive’ constitutional moment shortly afterwards proved fatal to the continued dynamism of this movement. Despite this, both the Charter's vision of a genuinely pluralist democracy in Britain and its legacy of a renewed vitality in constitutional debate remain potent within the contemporary constitutional reform landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 2007, the UK government announced that all new homes are to be ‘zero carbon’ by 2016. At present, zero carbon dwellings are significantly expensive to achieve, costing up to 40% more in capital costs than conventional building. Delivering the energy through a district energy supply achieves zero carbon at considerably less cost. This paper concluded that district energy using a large wind turbine and community biomass boiler could reduce technological capital costs by £20 000 (70%) per 128 m2 dwelling. It was estimated that a district energy can save £35 000 in capital and running costs over a 30 year life cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper I critique and then develop Willman, Bryson and Gomez's (2006) ‘Sound of Silence’ model of employer voice choice. I argue that the original cost/benefits based model, while potentially very useful, particularly for investigating cross-sectional variation in the incidence of voice, is curiously ill equipped to explain variation in voice arrangements over time. This shortcoming is the result of the failure to state explicitly some of the key determinants of the costs and benefits of employer voice choice, namely union power and political economic organization. I demonstrate how these variables have influenced the development of voice arrangements in Britain over the course of the last century and argue that as a result of these constraints, employer voice choice is often no choice at all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looks at the state and parliament and government in Great Britain. Publication of parliamentary paper; Role of Select Committee on Procedure; Nature of three reports in publication; Reports from Home Affairs Committee; Status of government reports on developments in European Community; Introduction of Intelligence Services Bill; Inquiry of Treasury and Civil Service Committee; Status of report from Representation of European Parliamentary Constituency.

Examines the character of the nineteenth-century electoral violence in United Kingdom (UK) with focus on England and Ireland. Social impact of electoral violence; Factors which sustained election riots in England and Ireland; Agrarian conflicts; Core of the Home Rule movement aimed at establishing a more sophisticated repertoire of agrarian action and modernizing the electoral process in UK.

The objective of this paper is to present a legal theory of agency selection. The theory posits why certain legal forms of agency are chosen when agencies are created by the executive branch of government. At the core of the theory is the idea that the executive branch chooses agency forms that strike a politically optimal balance between maximising its control while minimising its legal and political accountability for agency activities. This optimal balance is determined on an issue by issue basis. As such, the rise of the regulatory state has provided a means by which the executive branch of government has been able to strategically choose to divest itself of and minimise its legal accountability for the administration of government while, at the same time, maintaining effective political control of the administrative arm of government. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the complex and ambiguous relationship between Charter 88, its philosophy of democratic constitutionalism and the Europeanisation of the UK. On the one hand, increased European linkages have proved helpful to the achievement of many of the Charter's domestic goals. Nevertheless, the modalities of European political integration sit in a relationship of tension with the Charter's democratic constitutionalist philosophy. As an organisation, Charter/Unlock Democracy has shown only a limited awareness of this tension and, in particular, has failed to appreciate the considerable difficulties of creating a genuine demos at the European level. This article argues that democratic constitutionalism would best be served a more modest and focused EU which respects popular sovereignty and matches its competences to those legitimately managed by transnational governance mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years a growing number of commentators, especially ones associated with the idea of a 'new imperial history', have argued that British politics and culture remained more heavily shaped by colonialism and decolonization than had previously conventionally been thought. This paper pursues that line of thought in relation to political debates during and since the 1980s, especially those concerning devolution, constitutional reform, and race relations. It then, however, highlights some major problems with and limitations of this kind of argument, suggesting that the emerging historiography of Britain's 'internal decolonization' remains at present empirically weak, conceptually cloudy, and often unhelpfully polarized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, governments have increasingly employed expert assessments and formal decision-making technologies. While these promise objectivity and transparency, they are just as likely to buffer decisions from public scrutiny. Countries such as Britain and the United States have experienced a sharp decline in electoral participation. Social scientists have responded with participatory techniques to resituate the non-expert citizen at the heart of decision making. This paper explores three specific problems with such methods: evaluation; representation; and agenda setting. It concludes that participatory techniques may have significant potential to inform and supplement representative democracy. However, under current arrangements, it is impossible for them to escape political-cultural constraints that reduce complex moral and aesthetic issues to scientific framings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the first steps taken by the newly elected Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government was to initiate a review of the national strategy of the United Kingdom. The review culminated in October 2010 in the publication of a revised National Security Strategy as well as a new Strategic Defence and Security Review. With the benefit of over twelve months of hindsight, this article is concerned with the formulation, the implementation and the longer-term implications of the 2010 strategy review. The first part of the article assesses the review as a national strategic plan. What were the strategic challenges addressed by the review, what decisions, judgements and misjudgements were made, and what was overlooked? In part two the authors turn to operational matters: how far was the UK's post-review strategic experience (i.e. in Afghanistan and Libya) consistent with the decisions and promises made in 2010? Part three discusses the review as a public statement of national policy, gauging the impression it has made on the national strategic narrative since 2010: how was the review received, what reputation has it acquired and what was/is the quality of the debate surrounding it? Finally, in part four the article asks what the 2010 review and its aftermath reveal of the formulation and implementation of national strategy in the United Kingdom. Was the 2010 review simply the latest in a long series of attempts by government to find a convincing and durable compromise between security challenges and national resources? Or was the review the beginning of something different altogether? Could UK national strategy henceforth be more of an adaptive, iterative process than a compressed period of analysis and reflection followed by the publication of a policy statement with an inevitably brief shelf-life? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conducting an exit poll to forecast the outcome of a national election in terms of both votes and seats is particularly difficult in Britain. No official information is available on how individual polling stations voted in the past, use of single-member plurality means that there is no consistent relationship between votes and seats, electors can choose to vote by post and most of those who vote in person do so late in the day. In addition, around one in every six intended exit poll respondents refuses to participate. Methods that were developed to overcome these problems, and their use in the successful 2005 British Broadcasting Corporation–Independent Television exit poll, are described and evaluated. The methodology included a panel design to allow the estimation of electoral change at local level, coherent multiple-regression modelling of multiparty electoral change to capture systematic patterns of variation, probabilistic prediction of constituency winners to account for uncertainty in projected constituency level shares, collection of information about the voting intentions of postal voters before polling day and access to interviewer guesses on the voting behaviour of refusals. The coverage and accuracy of the exit poll data are critically examined, the effect of key aspects of the statistical modelling of the data is assessed and some general lessons are drawn for the design and analysis of electoral exit polls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democracy in Britain would appear to be in decline. Fewer people are joining political parties; fewer people are participating in general elections; and mass protest on a wide variety of issues is rising. This apparent breakdown in formal political engagement in Britain and other liberal democracies has led to a renewed claim by many critics inside and outside of academia that traditional representative forms of democratic governance have had their day and need to be replaced by a more direct model of democracy. This paper argues that this would be a mistake, and that [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the specifically domestic and cultural properties of British decolonization are explored. It is suggested that the very category of 'post-colonial Britain' invites us to think in these terms. Conventionally, the question of the domestic consequences of decolonization is thought in terms of the native white population of Britain. This article turns attention to the role of the black migrants resident in the metropolis during the years of decolonization: most especially, to the role of West Indians. By a reading of the West Indian Gazette it is proposed that the West Indian migrant played an active role in the organization of a specifically anti-colonial culture--providing the means by which white Britons, too, could come to terms with the end of Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses pledges and progress in British government policies governing various sectors in 1997-1998. Health; Welfare; Education; Law and order; Economy.

Focuses on the modernisation and democratisation of the British government and administration in 1997-1998. Modernisation of the Cabinet and the machinery of government; Procedures and standards in modernizing the Parliament; Government reform and freedom of information.

From 1717 the 'leadership' of the house of lords was seen to be attached to the office of Secretary of State for the north (at that time occupied by the 3rd earl of Sunderland), for from then evidence exists in the form of lists of lords invited to or attending pre-sessional meetings, held in the Secretary's office. However, the leadership did not suddenly emerge from nowhere. There is evidence, examined here, to show that aspects of the job were initiated by Sunderland in the last whig ministry of Anne's reign, which were then developed by Robert Harley, 1st earl of Oxford, between 1711 and 1714, and again by Sunderland after 1714. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the effects of the media in British politics from 1945. Relationship between media and politics; Effects of television; Press partisanship.

The article focuses on the Cabinet government of Great Britain. It notes that the size of the British Cabinet has expanded since 1900 from an average membership of approximately 19 members until 1964 to 21 thereafter. Moreover, the author argues that the growth in the size of the government does not reflect the growth in the scale, volume and intensity of government business on the same period. He also mentions that a cabinet designed during the 19th century was meant to adapt with large scale business and interventionist government characteristic of the 20th century.

The article discusses the performance standards for civil servants and its implications in the political landscape. According to the author, the implementation of performance evaluation is important to ensure that the general interest of the public is important and all concerns are properly addressed. It has been a good tool in cost-cutting exercises because they can determine those certain factors that have cost the operations a lot and would be able to device a plan that would limit the costs incurred for the operation. Likewise, administrative officials uses these measurements to monitor the activities of those in the lower levels. The measurements also act as aids in rewarding those that perform well and penalizing those that aren't.

The article offers information on some parliamentary developments in the government and politics of Great Britain from April 1982 to July 1982. It is posed that dispute with Argentina over the Falkland islands prevailed in British politics throughout the early summer of 1982. Relative to this, the House of Commons conducted six major debates on this conflict. Moreover, Britain's relations with the European Community undergone a crisis in late May 1982, and on June 23, 1982, the Labour Party's National Executive Committee voted 16 to 10 to take on recommendations made by its senior officers for the creation of a register for organized groups within the party. In addition to this, the House of Commons voted on the imposition of capital punishment.

The model of this paper highlights two aspects of credibility: signalling the type of government, which is assumed not to be known; and, for any type, the likelihood that if circumstances are sufficiently unfavourable a devaluation will be impossible to avoid, since not to do so would go against the government's interests. These two factors have opposite implications for the link between unemployment and interest differentials: high unemployment signals a tough government, but also makes it less likely that even a tough government will maintain an existing parity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers the first analytical overview of the political thinking and organisational history of the Tory Reform Committee (TRC). It is also a contribution to wider scholarly debates about the making of a 'New Conservatism' in the 1940s and the development of Conservative thought in the twentieth century. The TRC's leading members drew on the party's Disraelian one-nation tradition to free them from adopting doctrinaire positions. They wanted to emphasise the merits of either state intervention, planning and social reform, or private enterprise, individualism and freedom, depending on the country's economic and social position—and the party's electoral position. Most Tory Reformers imposed limits on the malleability of their Conservatism by rejecting laissez-faire individualism, socialism, and the earliest signs of neoliberalism. Although the group was replaced by the Design for Freedom Movement, which adopted a similar political outlook on a non-party basis between 1947 and 1949, its broader significance relates to how its support for the principles of 'design' and 'freedom' influenced Conservative debates about economic and social policy at a pivotal moment in the party's history. Continuities of thought suggest that we should be wary of interpretations which impose an 'origins of neoliberalism' or proto-Thatcherite framework on the 1940s. The TRC's 'New Conservatism' was meant to be adaptable, practical and Keynesian. It was a pitch for the centre ground and it was integral to the political thought of Conservative governments between 1951 and 1974. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When powerful liberal democratic states are found to be complicit in extreme violations of human rights, how do they respond and why do they respond as they do? Drawing on the example of the United Kingdom's complicity in torture since 9/11, this article demonstrates how reluctant the UK has been to permit a full reckoning with its torturous past. We demonstrate that successive UK governments engaged in various forms of denial, obfuscation and attempts to obstruct investigation and avoid accountability. The net effect of their responses has been to deny the victims redress, through adequate judicial processes, and to deny the public adequate state accountability. These responses are not simply aimed at shielding from prosecution the perpetrators and those who have oversight of them, nor preventing political embarrassment. The various forms of denial and obstruction are also designed to ensure that collusion can continue uninterrupted. A core concern of intelligence officials and ministers has been to prevent any process that would lead to a comprehensive prohibition on involvement in operations where torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment are a real possibility. The door remains wide open, and deliberately so, for British involvement in torture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Harold Wilson's resignation honours list of 1976 was almost universally condemned by politicians, civil servants, and the press because it contained a number of high honours to individuals who were seen as scandalously lacking in merit. Unknown officials leaked details to the press and used multiple internal mechanisms, including the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee, to try to block the list, but Wilson pushed it through. This article examines the controversy around the list in terms of how the various parties involved used ideas about scandal, honour, and merit to discredit Wilson, his secretary Marcia Falkender and the honours nominees. It shows that the scandal was shaped by three double standards: one of the main grounds for the disqualification of certain appointees was that they had not donated to Labour; in spite of their traditional prioritization of secrecy around honours, the civil service failed to uphold this tradition when it suited them not to; and critics of the list attacked Falkender's influence over the list even as they defended their own traditional place in determining who was selected for honours. The scandal also shows how the British establishment and British society was struggling to deal with broader questions about the value of exactly the kinds of service that Wilson honoured in the list, namely, capitalist entrepreneurship, popular culture, and contributions from traditional outsiders. While the list was universally condemned in 1976, these forms of service were to become more valued in honours lists from the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scotland's political divergence from England is a key theme in late twentieth century British history. Typically seen in terms of the post-1979 Thatcher effect, this in fact developed over a longer timeframe, rooted in industrial changes revealed by analysis of the Linwood car plant in Renfrewshire. Conservatism and Unionism was an eminent political force in Scotland in the 1940s and 1950s. But in all general elections from 1959 onwards the vote share of Conservative and Unionist candidates was lower in Scotland than in England. From the late 1960s onwards there were also ambitions for constitutional change. This article breaks new conceptual and empirical ground by relating these important markers of political divergence to popular understanding among Scottish workers of deindustrialization. A Thompsonian moral economy framework is deployed. Expectations were elevated by industrial restructuring from the 1950s, with workers exchanging jobs in the staples for a better future in assembly goods. Labour governments earned a reputation in Scotland as better managers of this process than Conservative governments. The 1979 general election showed that Labourism was growing in popularity in Scotland just as its appeal faded in England. At Linwood moral economy expectations were compromised, chiefly by intermittent redundancy and recurrent threat of closure, which was averted in 1975 by Labour government intervention. When the plant was shut in 1981 criticisms of UK political-constitutional structures and Conservativism were intensified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constitutional conventions are fundamental to the operation of Westminster democracies. However, despite their political significance, there have been few attempts to analyse and theorise their internal dynamics. This article aims to address this gap by identifying the triggers of constitutional 'softening', when the opportunity for convention change emerges; and examining how such moments interact with the particular properties of a convention to determine its change trajectory. We argue that the change trajectories of constitutional conventions are not entirely unpredictable but can be traced to particular kinds of change events and the particular set of features inherent to that convention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 2017 general election campaign, the Conservative and Labour leaders toured the country. While Theresa May operated a conventional approach, encapsulated by limited interactions with the public, Jeremy Corbyn participated in public rallies and appeared at music festivals. This article examines the strategic decisions underpinning leader visits in the 2017 campaign trail. It finds that May and Corbyn's electoral strategies had more in common than at first sight. The article adds to existing studies by using new interview data from local party campaigners to understand visit organisation and impact on the local campaign. It also makes an important step towards unpicking the causal mechanism through which these visits may affect voter behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1980s, prostitution resurfaced as the object of feminist politics as second-wave activists grappled with Thatcherism, prostitute rights, tenant activism, anti-violence movements, and changes in the street sex trade and in policing. These conflicting imperatives converged on King's Cross, London. Events in King's Cross highlight some general trends, especially shifts in policing and in the geographic dispersal of the street sex trade. King's Cross also possessed singular features. It was the epicentre of street prostitution in London and the destination for hundreds of northern women migrating to the metropolis to sell sex. Intensified policing of the street trade provoked a heated neighbourhood dispute between council tenants and a media-savvy prostitute rights group. The year 1982 also marked a new configuration in local politics: the control of Camden Council by Labour Left and the formation of the Camden Women's Committee. In this challenging environment, newly elected municipal feminists in Camden set out to devise a feminist practice around prostitution. They found themselves embroiled in local disputes over public space, gender justice, policing, municipal progressivism, and resident action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a long decline in membership in political parties across Western democracies, parties in the UK have seen an upsurge, especially in young members. Surprisingly, few studies have explored young members of political parties. This article addresses this gap and examines the following: Who are the young party activists? What do they think about politics? What are their motivations for political participation? This article draws on a unique dataset of activists in the three main parties youth factions in the UK. It finds that the youth faction activists have very similar socioeconomic backgrounds, perceive themselves to be politically effective and hold quite positive views about politicians. The analysis also shows that these young people do not consider their youth faction to be the only way for them to influence politics and are not self-interestedly motivated—that is, joining to begin or advance a political career. Finally, the article proposes improvements as to how political parties, and their youth factions, engage with young people in order to secure their future viability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses how penal policymakers interpret, rationalize and thereby instantiate ‘external’ change. In order to do so, it presents a critical reconstruction of penal policymaking during the 2010–15 UK coalition government, drawing on interviews with senior policymakers. It explores how policymakers sought to respond to the uncertainties of this unusual period in British politics. We see the ‘shallow roots’ of the 2010–15 coalition: in the face of novel challenges, policymakers grasped for traditional, exclusionary rationalities and practices. This study demonstrates the complex interaction between conditions ‘out there’, the rationalities and practices of specific policymakers, and eventual policy outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at how the single member plurality electoral system failed to deliver a safe overall majority to the winning party during the 2017 general election in Great Britain. Topics discussed include the electoral geography of the division of the votes cast for the Conservatives and Labour at each election since 1955, the increase in support for smaller third parties, and the changes in the pattern of population movement.

Abstract: The sources and nature of ‘radicalism’ in late eighteenth‐century Britain have long been debated. At the same time, the impact of war on British politics, society and culture in this period has been underappreciated until recently. While war is recognized as having aided the spread of popular loyalism, its role in stimulating radicalism has been neglected. Based on study of the publications and letters of Richard Price (1723–91), this article highlights the influence of Anglo‐French rivalry and war on the thought of a leading Rational Dissenter and champion of political reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The division within the Parliamentary Conservative Party (PCP) over Britain's membership of the EU has been one of the most significant intra-party divisions in European political history. The 2016 Brexit referendum campaign offered a unique opportunity to consider legislative motivations as almost every MP declared a preference and frontbench MPs were free to back either side. This article uses logistic regression analysis in order to consider MPs' motivations in terms of Mü ller and Strøm's policy, office and votes trichotomy. It is argued that all three motivations affected MPs decision making on the EU referendum. However, vote-seeking motivations were less influential than either policy or office-seeking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a speech by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Member of Parliament (MP) for Plymouth, England attacking Robert Bell, MP for King's Lynn. Topics discussed include the argument that Gilbert's statement is remarkable in the context of what people know about the history of English political thinking and ideas, how this speech complicates knowledge about the ways in which early Elizabethans conceived of the "Tudor Constitution" and background on Gilbert.

The UK's FOI Act came into force in 2005. Three linked research projects were conducted to evaluate its overall impact and assess to what extent FOI has met its objectives across central and local government and Parliament. They conclude that FOI has met its 'core' objectives, making central government more transparent and accountable. However, it has not improved decision-making, public understanding, participation or trust. Nor has FOI significantly changed how government works, despite politicians' fears of a chilling effect. The article concludes with a look at the key issues that will shape the future of FOI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disappointment is often identified as a pathology of modern politics; citizens expect Much of politicians, yet governments are ill-equipped to deliveroutcomes commensurate with those expectations. The net result is said to be a widespread disappointment; a negative balance between what citizens expect of government and what they perceive governments to deliver. Yet little attention has hitherto been paid to which kinds of citizens are particularly disappointed with politics, and why. This article offers one of the first empirical analyses of political disappointment. Drawing on a survey conducted in Britain, it provides a quantitative measure of political disappointment and explores its prevalence among citizens. It then considers which social groups might be more prone to disappointment than others. In particular, it explores whether certain groups are more disappointed by virtue of holding very high expectations of government or very low perceptions of government performance. The article concludes by considering what strategies might be open to policy makers to alleviate political disappointment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the 'referendum lock' enshrined in the European Union Act (2011) and the pledge to hold a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union have eroded the principle of parliamentary sovereignty that they sought to defend. Analysis of the Act and debates about an In-Out referendum during the Coalition government's period of office from 2010 to 2015 reveals an unintended consequence: recent debates and policies concerning the European Union have enshrined a populist nationalism opposed to European integration as part of contemporary British political culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Telecommunications was one of the first markets to become part of what today comprises the regulatory state, shifting risks and rewards towards the private sector, subject to regulation. Parliamentary has oversight of policies, the regulator and subventions from HM Treasury, which are necessary to extend networks beyond what is commercially viable. Her Majesty's Government (HMG) is committeed to near universal broadband to meet political demands from rural communities and to ensure access to 'digital by default' government services. Parliamentary committees have reviewed the interventions by HMG, especially subventions for network extensions, and the work of the regulatory authority, plus work on cyber security and the collection of metadata. The regulatory system, built up over three decades, is too complex for easy oversight and review, with significant parts beyond parliamentary reach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The1972RobensReport is widely regarded to have provided the underlyingrationale for the 'modern' system of occupational health and safety regulation in Britain, embodied in the Health and Safety at Work Act (HSW Act) 1974. The HSWAct advanced a new, more flexible system of regulation, premised on the ideal of self-regulation by industry. This article advances a more nuanced historical understanding of the Report and its ethos--the 'Robens philosophy'--than hitherto developed, situating its assumptions about accidents, regulation and the role of the state in the social, economic and political context of Britain in the 1960s and early 1970s. Highlighting the interaction between these trends andlong-established regulatory practices, the article argues that the turn to 'self-regulation' heralded by the Robens Report was highly convincing from a political and regulatory perspective at the time it was promulgated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates whether ethnic minority individuals are more likely to vote when they can vote for a candidate who shares their ethnic background. It uses individual-level data from the 2010 Ethnic Minority British Election Study and finds that Pakistani individuals were more likely to vote when they had the opportunity to vote for a Pakistani candidate from the Labour party, and that this effect is due to people in their social network attempting to convince them how to vote. The same is true of Muslim voters and Muslim candidates. I interpret these results as evidence that biraderi is being used to mobilise these voters along ethnic lines. Muslim candidates from the Labour party are associated with lower turnout among Sikhs. However, there were no candidate mobilisation effects among Indians, black Caribbeans or black Africans, or for Conservative or Liberal Democrat candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do media organisations turn on unpopular governments and, if so, why? I model a demand-side and supply-side explanation and derive testable implications that can be used to differentiate between them. I take these predictions to the data by examining whether British newspapers give more coverage to investigations into government members of parliament when the government is behind in the polls. Instrumenting for poll leads with plausibly-exogenous macroeconomic variables I find that a 1 SD increase in a government's poll lead leads to a 30-60% decline in coverage. I also find suggestive evidence that this effect is demand driven. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]